Tag: gardening tools

10 Gardening and Lawn Care Tools You Need

Posted on by Giovine
lawn care tool

So you want to do some home gardening and landscaping. That’s fantastic! Every homeowner should know how to tend to their property. If you’re not sure where to start, though, you’ve come to the right place! We’re here to help you stock up on all the gardening and lawn care tools you’ll need. 

Gloves

When you’re dealing with the elements and sharp objects, you’re going to want to protect your hands! A nice, sturdy pair of gardening gloves will keep your hands clean and guarded from any possible hazards! You may also want to invest in other safety equipment like eye and ear protection, as well as long sleeve shirts and pants.

Hand Trowel

This is your most basic of lawn care tools. Versatile and reliable, hand trowels are the best tool to use for digging small holes and smoothing out gardening material. If you’re looking to start a small home garden, a trusty hand trowel will take you a long way!

Rakes

We recommend picking up two types of rakes: leaf and steel rakes. Leaf rakes are for your typical fallen leaf and debris collection, while steel rakes are for more stubborn gardening components like soil and mulch. Both types are very useful for lawn maintenance and upkeep.

Shovels

When you have to dig up some holes or move some dirt around, a dependable shovel is your best friend! A traditional, curved-edge shovel is designed for transporting loose material, while a flat-edge spade is great for digging. Both types of shovels are imperative additions to your arsenal!

Hoe

If you intend to plant some seeds, you’re going to want a gardening hoe. Weeds are more than likely to form, but a hoe will quickly eliminate them. Any serious gardener will have this tool in their kit!

Buckets

You don’t have to carry everything by hand! Whether you’re transporting soil or organizing your smaller tools, you’re going to want a few buckets.

Wheelbarrow

If you’re going to tackle a larger gardening project, you may want a wheelbarrow. It’s a fantastic mode of transporting an immense amount of soil, mulch, compost, and/or gravel. You won’t want to make a thousand trips back and forth moving all of that material!

Pruning Shears

Want to do some work on your bushes and shrubs? A sharp pair of shears will help you prune your shrubbery down to exactly how you want it to look. Be sure to call an expert before you do so though, as improper pruning can damage your bushes.

Lawn Mower

Your grass won’t cut itself! Investing in a top-quality lawn mower will make your life infinitely easier if you’re looking to maintain your lawn yourself. If you purchase a higher end mower, please do not hesitate to ask someone for advice on how to use it!

Leaf Blower

If you don’t want to manually rake up all those fallen leaves, a leaf blower is a fantastic alternative! It’s far and away the most efficient leaf-collecting practice, and it’ll save you the headache of expending all your energy raking them.

There are many more lawn care tools to possibly add to your set, but hopefully this is a good enough start to get you prepared for tending to your garden and lawn! If you have any questions about these tools and how to use them, or you want a group of professionals to do all the work for you, call Giovine Landscaping today at (937) 325-1758!

Fall Landscaping Mistakes To Know & Avoid

Posted on by Giovine
Fall Landscaping Mistakes To Know & Avoid

When it comes to keeping up with your landscaping, timing is everything. For example, while the fall season is great for planting trees, it is not the best for pruning certain shrubs. The last thing you want is to wait until the spring season of next year only to find out that the maintenance performed in the fall (if any was performed at all) did more harm than good to your lawn. So, with that said, let’s take a look at a few fall landscaping maintenance mistakes you should know about and how you can avoid them.

Letting The Leaves Pile Up

Raking your leaves is just for the clean, aesthetic look. In addition, you shouldn’t assume that because no one rakes the forest floor and there are no issues with those trees that your lawn will fare just as well. A pile-up of leaves left on your lawn can suffocate the grass and negatively impact the airflow. Plus, it could lead to snow mold which is a lawn fungal infection that forms beneath the fallen leaves and can leave to dead areas.

Pruning Yews, Boxwood, and Spring-Flowering Shrubs

While yews and boxwood shrubs typically take pruning well, you shouldn’t be doing so after late August. The reason being that pruning too late will stimulate new growth that will not have the chance to harden off before the deep freeze of winter arrives. Now, while this will not totally kill the shrub, it will give you plenty of winter injury to remove when the spring season arrives. A rule of thumb is that shrubs that typically flower in the spring should be pruned immediately after they stop flowering.

Storing Tools Without Proper Cleanup

Gardening tools are what make the hard work a little bit easier which is why you should treat them with a little bit more love before storing them away for the winter. Proper maintenance of your tools will help them work more efficiently and become more durable, saving you the expense of having to replace them. First, be sure to clean them; you can use a wire brush to get the hard to remove bits of mud and debris. For rust spots, you would wanna use steel wool or fine sandpaper and then a file to restore the edge on shovels, lawn-mower blades, and pruners.

Cutting The Entire Garden

During the fall, it can be very tempting to go all in and cut your entire garden as the clean canvas can seem so appealing. However, keep in mind that there are many different creatures that need to survive the winter by staying within the hollow stems, and other nooks and crannies of your garden. So, try and leave them a little bit of sanctuary to ride out during the cold season. In addition, it’s important to know that native bees, butterflies, and others benefit from the “dead” gardens of the winter.

With the fall season right around the corner, be sure to familiarize yourself with these and other common maintenance mistakes and try to avoid them as best as possible. For additional questions on fall lawn maintenance, be sure to contact Giovine Landscaping at (973) 325-1758!

Essential Gardening Tools You Must Have

Posted on by Giovine
Essential Gardening Tools You Must Have

As the weather begins to slowly get warmer, it is important to begin thinking about the improvements you can make to your garden this coming spring. In order to make some of these changes, you are going to need the right tools for certain jobs. So, in this article, we are going to look at some of the most essential gardening tools everyone should have for landscaping

Weeder

If you are looking to tackle weeds, your best option will be to get simple weeder, rather than polluting the garden with any harmful chemicals. These small hand tools have a forked end which makes them ideal for digging individual weeds and removing them by the root. Plus, if you use your weeder correctly, you should be able to remove all of the offending plants so that it does not return. This will require some hard work though as removing weeds one at a time can be a time-consuming process.

Garden Scissors

Garden scissors are an essential but sometimes overlooked tool for gardeners. The reason for this is that they are extremely versatile and you can use them to a lot of simple chores. For example, you can use them for opening seed packets, performing delicate pruning jobs of small flowers, and you can also use them to dig out weeds if you have nothing else available. You will just need to be sure to clean them thoroughly afterwards. As a gardener, you need to be ready to improvise when the right tool is not at hand, and with a tool as versatile as garden scissors, you can do just that. 

Curved Blade Digging Shovel

Having a full-length curved blade digging shovel is a staple gardening tool and for good reason. You can use your shovel for a lot of the heavy-duty digging jobs such as planting trees and large shrubs. Shovels are also great when you are working over a lot of soil over a short amount of time. You can use it to loosen up the soil and get it ready for planting before you use a rake to break down any lumps and get the soil into a smooth finish that is ready for planting.

Gardening Gloves

Many people enjoy the feeling of dirt in their hands, but despite that, you still need a good pair of gardening gloves. They will definitely help you avoid any unwanted blisters from handing digging. Make sure you get a versatile pair that can help with weeding, planting, landscaping, picking fruit and vegetables to name a few.

Wheelbarrow

When it comes to digging out new gardens or taking care of a weed infestation, you’re bound to develop a lot of waste material. This is where having a wheelbarrow can be extremely useful because even if you have a backyard compost, you can use the wheelbarrow to carry the waste there. It will help save you a lot of time and effort, but make sure that the tires are properly inflated before you get to work.

These are just some of the essential gardening tools you should have and there are plenty more. For more information on this or any other landscaping needs, be sure to call Giovine Landscaping at (973) 325-1758!